5 Houston post offices closing, but Southmore remains undecided

The U.S. Postal Service is moving forward with plans to “relocate'” five Houston post offices but hasn’t announced a decision for the Southmore Station on Almeda. (Mayra Beltran | Houston Chronicle)

The U.S. Postal Service has decided to move five of six post offices in Houston, but no decision has been made about the Southmore Station — which stands at a historic site and has received huge support for remaining open at that address.

The University Station, Greenbriar Station, Julius Melcher Station, Memorial Park Station and Medical Center Station will be “relocated,” Dionne Montague, a Houston-based spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service, confirmed Wednesday morning. Simply, that means those post offices will no longer exist at their current addresses. New locations for them have not been determined.

“Notices for the five locations with the exception of Southmore have come forward,” she said. “Because we got so many letters, we’re still reviewing Southmore. There will be an announcement for Southmore shortly, once we finish the review process.”

Anyone can submit an appeal about the locations slated to be shut down and moved elsewhere. The deadline is March 21, 2014. Send a written statement identifying the post office name or location, the objection and the reason for the objection to: Vice President of Facilities, c/o Sandra Rybicki, Real Estate Specialist, U.S. Postal Service, Southern Facilities Service Office, P.O. Box 667180, Dallas, Texas, 75266-7180.

Southmore Station, at 4110 Almeda, sits at the historic site of Houston’s first sit-in demonstration. In 1960, Texas Southern University students marched from their campus to that location to challenge segregated lunch counters at what was then Weingarten’s supermarket.

“There have been so many complaints about the relocation process that the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General in November began conducting an audit to determine “whether the Postal Service is providing affected customers enough information about relocation plans to enable those customers to fully understand and react to their potential impact.” The results are expected this spring.

The information gap makes it difficult to figure out how to effectively challenge a proposed change.

“Most of the communities where these fights have taken place have lost and many of them have put up huge resistance from community groups to elected officials like the mayor or even members of Congress. It’s a very tough battle,” said Steve Hutkins, a literature professor at New York University who founded the website, Savethepostoffice.com.

He became a postal service watchdog in 2011 when the agency threatened to close 4,300 post offices including his small station in New York’s Hudson Valley north of Manhattan.

“The Postal Service tries to minimize occasions where people can have feedback and input. The notification is poor. They do the minimum they are required to do,” he said, adding that the Houston process is one of “the more egregious efforts to avoid community input” because the Postal Service went before Houston City Council only once about six possible relocations.”

Earlier this month, a Postal Service gaffe resulted in the premature — and erroneous — notice of the relocation of retail services. But now, that fate has come to pass for five of the post offices on the list.

If moved, the Southmore Station would reopen at a “yet-to-be-determined” location within the same ZIP code – 77004, according to a Postal Service announcement.

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Welcome to the Chronicle's Houston Advocate blog, written by reporter Cindy George. The Advocate is the newspaper's consumer affairs and government watchdog column, with a mission to expose unfairness and help set things right for our readers.
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